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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28099809">Day Eight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkerofthestars/pseuds/walkerofthestars'>walkerofthestars</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Nightwing (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Gray Son, The Court of Owls - Freeform, The Labyrinth - Freeform, Where did everybody go?, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, don't say goodbye abandoned isolation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:16:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,991</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28099809</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkerofthestars/pseuds/walkerofthestars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Whumptober 2020<br/>Where did everybody go?<br/>don't say goodbye, abandoned, isolation</p><p>
  <em>He placed his hand back on the wall and kept walking. <br/>He knew how isolation worked. He knew how badly this could go for him. he knew the signs. <br/>His footsteps became echoed, inside the sound hid whispers, shrieks, calls, the mutterings of the people he was beginning to miss. </em>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055567</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Day Eight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p>He was injured, blood clotting in cuts and bruises all over. His suit was torn, he was missing his mask, the knuckles of his gloves were frayed and blood-stained.</p><p>But there was no one to ask questions of.</p><p>He wondered the maze, endless halls of tiled white, turning this way and that, doubling back, twisting on themselves. There seemed no end.</p><p>He placed his left hand on the wall and walked. There <em>had </em>to be an entrance or exit or at least <em>something </em>in this maze. Who had built it? why? Why was he <em>in it</em>?</p><p>He couldn’t remember. There was a blur, a haze, of him fighting someone. Dark mask and gold edges and weapons gleaming. He could remember, through the haze of his concussion, fighting for his life against foes that refused to remain injured. He remembered calling for help, he didn’t remember it arriving.</p><p>After hours, or perhaps days, he couldn’t be sure, he came upon a statue. It was dark, towering, a shadow that rose from a fountain like a great sea god cresting into the air, bearing down with a war-rage-fuelled yell to wash away thousands, destroy civilisations, leave nothing but a wake of endless destruction. A horned owl, eyes glistening and shining with some kind of unknown menace.</p><p>He stopped, leaning against the edge of the fountain. This was as good a landmark as any, his training told him to orient himself by it. his throat felt like it had grown scaled, cracked, dry, a desert that had become so absent of water there was nothing to hold the dirt together and it cleaved into plates.</p><p>But he cupped the water in his palm and smelt it, it was vaguely antiseptic, ethanol-like, medicinal. And beneath that bleached guise he thought he caught a whiff of almond. Apple seeds. It was drugged.</p><p>He dropped the water back into the fountain, flicking his hands absentmindedly as he looked up at the owl statue.</p><p>Where was everyone? Surely there were people somewhere. If he’d been placed in here there had to be an entrance and thus someone who knew of it. why leave him in a maze to die when they could just as well put a bullet in his head?</p><p>He placed his hand back on the wall and kept walking.</p><p>He knew how isolation worked. He knew how badly this could go for him. he knew the signs.</p><p>His footsteps became echoed, inside the sound hid whispers, shrieks, calls, the mutterings of the people he was beginning to miss.</p><p>There weren’t shadows, but the edges of his vision, the corner of his eyes, became filled with movement that didn’t exist. He turned corners thinking he saw someone’s shadow, turned round to look for tailing people that were not there.</p><p>He smelled nothing, but every time he came back to the fountain the smell of bleach and ethanol got stronger. The clean scent. Like a murder scene scrubbed clean.</p><p>Murder scenes shouldn’t be scrubbed, if you asked him. the blood, yes, that was obvious. He wasn’t talking about fixed wallpaper and objects moved back where they belong and weapons removed from the scene and blood scraped away incessantly like Lady Macbeth at her own hands, crying for the red stain to flee. That was normal, that was fine. But people scrubbed murder scenes in two ways; physically and mentally.</p><p>Physically had to happen. Physically you had to move on.</p><p>Mentally, you should never forget that someone had died in your living room.</p><p>To him it seemed ridiculous, people cleaning and scrubbing and decorating and lying. Realters smiling and saying, ‘this is a lovely suburban home with a wonderful history’. If every murder was forgotten all of history would go with it.</p><p>This maze felt like a murder scene that was constantly being scrubbed clean. He felt like he would not be the first nor last to be subject to it. every second that ticked by was another moment that he had no idea where he was, what this place was. It had been cleaned, scrubbed, wiped entirely of history. There were no traces. No history to learn from.</p><p>Maybe if he’d been privy to a history he’d have given in sooner. He’d have drank the bloody water and let himself be knocked out. It didn’t matter. The people who owned the maze were patient. If he didn’t drop from the drugs in the fountain then they would wait for him to fall from dehydration.</p><p>Days bled, weeks bled, months bled.</p><p>Soaking, his suit was soaking with the blood of the bleeding days. The time he’d spent in here, going round in circles, never finding an exit. The only time he wasn’t subject to his mind slowly circling the drain of insanity was when he’d fallen prey to the limits of his body and passed out. He woke up in darkness, and if it weren’t for the pain they put him through in that darkened room he would be glad for it.</p><p>He didn’t know how many times it was. Maybe ten, twenty, a hundred. But eventually he drank the water.</p><p>The dosage was low, it took him a few hours to black out. When he did wake up it was in the dark room.</p><p>The haze of pain left him waking up again in the labyrinth, aching but healed as if the hours of torture had not happened, as if he’d imagined them, too. Maybe he had.</p><p>He didn’t remember people’s voices anymore, they’d bled out of his mind. but he still heard echoes, the hallways seemed to lengthen, the sounds echoed in his mind, shadows flitted past the edges of his vision, the light not hitting anything to cast them.</p><p>Until they hit the owl.</p><p>He stared at them, a dark hunk of empty standing in the middle of the hallway. There was a shadow beneath him, he was real. When he walked he made sound, he was real. The light flashed on the gold pieces of his uniform, he was real.</p><p>He took out a dagger and held it out to Dick by the blade, hilt outstretched. Dick stared at it.</p><p>He blinked and there was someone behind him, kneeling, unconscious, a bag over their head.</p><p>“kill it,” said the shadow, the void of a person.</p><p>“why?”</p><p>“because we will let you drink real water if you do.”</p><p>“I don’t kill.”</p><p>“the court has sentenced it to die-“</p><p>“them,” Dick corrected, “they’re a person.”</p><p>“they’re a target.”</p><p>Dick shook his head, “I won’t kill.”</p><p>The person flicked the blade in his hand so he held it by the hilt.</p><p>“last chance,” he warned.</p><p>Dick glared.</p><p>The knife came crashing down on his chest-</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p>He was injured, blood clotting in cuts and bruises all over. His suit was torn, he was missing his mask, the knuckles of his gloves were frayed and blood-stained.</p><p>But there was no one to ask questions of.</p><p>He placed his hand back on the wall and started walking.</p><p>He knew how isolation worked. He knew how badly this could go for him. he knew the signs.</p><p>His footsteps became echoed, inside the sound hid whispers, shrieks, calls, the mutterings of the people he was beginning to miss.</p><p>There weren’t shadows, but the edges of his vision, the corner of his eye, became filled with movement that didn’t exist. He turned corners thinking he saw someone’s shadow, turned round to look for tailing people that were not there.</p><p>The shadows were not real, there was nothing for the light to hit that cast them.</p><p>Until he turned a corner.</p><p>And there stood the owl.</p><p>He held a dagger out to him by the blade.</p><p>“kill it.” he ordered.</p><p>Dick turned, there was a person, bag over their head, on their knees, hands restrained.</p><p>“kill it.”</p><p>“I don’t kill.”</p><p>“why not?”</p><p>There was no reason. There was supposed to be a reason. There was one, somewhere, shoved deep down in his brain. He didn’t kill because… he couldn’t remember.</p><p>This felt wrong.</p><p>This felt familiar.</p><p>He stared at the void-person in front of him. they were a human, they had to be, they were human-shaped.</p><p>And yet inside there seemed to be nothing. They were human shaped but not humane.</p><p>“kill it.”</p><p>“why?”</p><p>“because the court has sentenced him to die.”</p><p>“and why must I take orders from the court?”</p><p>“because you are a Talon.”</p><p>He’d heard that before. He was sure of it.</p><p>“you are the Gray Son.”</p><p>He frowned, staring at the dagger.</p><p>This felt wrong. This felt very wrong.</p><p>“what is this place?”</p><p>“if you kill it you will get your answers.”</p><p>“no.”</p><p>“kill it.”</p><p>“no.”</p><p>The dagger was flicked, the assassin held it properly and brought it down upon him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p>How many times had this happened now? He couldn’t be sure.</p><p>When he found the fountain he drank from it, he woke up in the dark room, he went through the pain, and then he woke up in the maze.</p><p>The man appeared faster this time, sooner. It didn’t take as long.</p><p>All he could hear was a rush in his ears, a pain all over, a drumbeat behind his eyes. This place was driving him insane.</p><p>The man held the knife out to him, he didn’t wait for the order.</p><p>“what will you give me if I kill it?”</p><p>“we will save you.”</p><p>He stared at the hilt, not even looking at the unconscious person behind him waiting to be stuck with a blade as easy as a needle in cotton.</p><p>He took the dagger, the hilt light in his hand, it was perfectly balanced, shining, it had been scraped clean, not a speck of blood was on it.</p><p>He didn’t kill.</p><p>
  <em>‘Rule number one: we don’t kill.’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘I thought rule number one was no guns?’</em>
</p><p>He looked at the man before him, waiting patiently.</p><p>He stabbed himself in the chest.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p> </p><p>“kill it.”</p><p>“why?”</p><p>“because the court has sentenced him to death.”</p><p>“why do you do as the court says?”</p><p>“because they saved me.”</p><p>“why must it die?”</p><p>“that is not our place to ask.”</p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the maze.</p><p>He stared at the assassin, a dark hunk of empty standing in the middle of the hallway. There was a shadow beneath him, he was real. When he walked he made sound, he was real. The light flashed on the gold pieces of his uniform, he was real.</p><p>He held the knife out to him.</p><p>“kill it.”</p><p>“why?”</p><p>“kill it.”</p><p>“what is this place?”</p><p>“this is the labyrinth.”</p><p>“why am I here?”</p><p>“kill it.”</p><p>“why?”</p><p>“kill it.”</p><p>“but <em>why</em>?”</p><p>“kill it.”</p><p>“if I kill it will you let me go?” he stared at the assassin, “if I kill it will you give me answers?”</p><p>“yes.”</p><p>He stared at the dagger, the hilt outstretched, an owl engraved in the metal at the end of the pommel.</p><p>He took it, his mind hazy.</p><p>If he killed it he could be free, he could get out, he could get answers. There were so many reasons to do it.</p><p>And what reason not to?</p><p>He asked himself the question, screamed it in his mind. why should he not kill this person? What did they do to deserve life so much?</p><p>He turned to the kneeling person, stared at them, knife in hand.</p><p> </p><p>He woke up in the dark room.</p><p>he wanted his answers, as they tied him down and fired up machines and stuck him with needles he grit his teeth and stared at the one person standing there, doing nothing.</p><p>“why?”</p><p>“you are the Gray Son.”</p>
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